Centurion
by Aromene
Summary: What he does most, locked in this little cell of damp cold rock, is talk to Amy. He tells her all the things he always wanted to say. Everything he ever thought and hoped and dreamed.


**AN: I wrote this immediately following my watching of the episode. I mean, before I did anything else. I'd never written so quickly before and it was great to just get my reactions down! Thanks and dedicated to Grav for the beta.**

**Disclaimer: And a new series dawns and once more, I don't own anything. Which is okay, because Steven Moffat is a God.**

"...stay away from heat and radio signals when they come along. You can't heal or repair yourself. Any damage is permanent. So for God's sake, no matter how bored you get, stay out of—'

And just like that there is quiet. In the guttering light of the torch Rory sits down on the edge of the prison cell that traps his fiancée. His dead fiancée. But although Rory has more than a few things to say about the Doctor he does actually trust the man. Amy will live again, somehow in the distant future. Everything will be okay. He's _sure _of that.

The flames weave shadows on the walls. And Rory waits.

* * *

At first he is aware of the days as they pass. The small amount of sunlight that escapes through cracks in the stone circle above allows him the insight into whether it is day or night. Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset. It's not long before he stops counting.

He paces a lot. He can only sit for so long before the need to move draws him on. The torches only lasted the first day. In the daylight he would pace and at night he would sit, the cavern shrouded in blackness with nothing except the cold of the metal behind him as comfort. But it's all the comfort he needs. She's _here_; just there behind him. He's not alone.

It's not long before he learns every corner of the room. He can pace in the darkness now without stumbling or running into the remnants of forgotten enemies imprisoned in this place and unaware of their end. Unaware that in this universe they never existed. They're just statues now and they can't hurt him. They are also a reminder of what is happening, as if he needs another one beyond what's locked in that box behind him.

Most days he sits and contemplates what the world is like outside. At best he is guessing, because Rory never liked history much, beyond Amy's Roman soldiers and so he only has a vague idea of what's happening in Britain around about this time. Of course, to make matters worse he has no idea what time it actually is. He's not sure if weeks, months, or years have passed. Some days he seems certain he can hear voices above, but not in any language he knows. The TARDIS, after all, is somewhere that is not here. He's not sure where, but its absence means that Rory no longer knows Old English from Norse. But even though the voices come and go, no one disturbs him. He almost longs for it. As long as they are left alone he can keep Amy safe. If they find them, what then? Rory will follow his girl anywhere, but it won't be that easy. And at some point someone has to find them. At least, Rory thinks so, since the Doctor wasn't at all clear on that subject.

But what he does most, locked in this little cell of damp cold rock, is talk to Amy. He tells her all the things he always wanted to say. Everything he ever thought and hoped and dreamed. And when he runs out of those stories he makes ones up. Adventures on distant worlds in other galaxies he knows nothing about. The Doctor had warned him about what loneliness can do, but Rory's not alone. Not really. As long as he has Amy to talk to, he'll never truly be alone.

It's a few months before he repeats a story. He's half way through the first time they met, voice echoing off silent stones, before he realises. He finishes telling it anyways because it's a good story.

His _favourite_ story though is part truth and part fiction. It's the story he wanted to tell to Amy when she was alive and the story that she, in some part, already knew because they sort of lived through that too. It starts the night of his stag do when a cute blond stripper named Lucy bursts out of the huge cake while he is on the answer phone with Amy and Rory is both excited and embarrassed in equal measure. He wakes the next morning to clear blue skies and marries Amy. And it's all perfect in the way a wedding should be. And they're _happy_. And a couple of years later Rory puts in for a transfer to Birmingham and Amy is even happier. He surprises her by finding a new apartment within walking distance of the Bullring. Their days are filled with Rory at work and Amy at shopping. But the truth is mixed up with lies, and the biggest of all is the fact that Rory knows Amy would never be content to while away more than a day shopping and certainly not in _Birmingham_. It's probably an injustice to think of her like that in his perfect fantasy.

His second favourite story involves the Hallowe'en Amy was eighteen and a Little Red Riding dress that clashed so badly with ginger hair that Rory refused to be seen in public with her. So she took it off. They stayed in that year.

He tells these stories in fits and spurts, sometimes silent for hours at a time or launching into a new one in the middle of a one-sided conversation about something else entirely. He can talk as much as he wants now and no one will interrupt. He wishes she would.

And the years tick by.

* * *

He doesn't wait that long, in the grand scheme of things. It's less than sixteen years later when the voices become more than vague whispers above the ground. They become people crowding his small little world.

And they're Romans, _of course. _Which in Rory's book is about the best case scenario, because this is something he knows how to deal with. Although he really doesn't have much to deal with in truth. If anything, the Roman scouts seem to expect his presence. They congratulate him for finding such a treasure and guarding it in the name of Caesar. Rory jumps on that bandwagon quickly, because he still remembers how to speak Latin. He tells them how he found it stumbling down into a hole in the dark and they laugh at that, thinking he was drunk. But when he tells them that sometimes he's heard whispered voices from the box, they stop laughing and regard him closely. The Romans are a superstitious lot and are just barbaric enough to believe such a story. Rory takes the opportunity to warn them that the voices whisper that the Pandorica cannot be opened before it is ready. They nod at him with a trace of awe in their eyes and begin taking bets on what's inside. No one gets it right.

It's a struggle and a half to get the box out of the underground chamber. Then end of digging up what seems like half of Stonehenge just to make a hole big enough. Rory cringes a lot and keeps telling himself that if the universe doesn't exist, well a few measly standing stones will hardly matter. But when they finally bring it to the surface and load it onto the cart with wheels almost as tall as he is, he breathes a sigh of relief. They have been found. They are out in the world and headed for Rome. For now, Amy is safe.

The Romans were builders. Once in Rome they built a whole _temple_ around the box and came to worship at the feet on something both unknown and unknowable. They kindly let the finder stand guard. After a while, they come to worship at his feet too; the soldier who does not die.

* * *

Everything goes along fine and dandy for about two hundred years. Rory overhears talk in the temple and so he has a vague idea of what year it is; what emperor is in power; and whatnot. None of it means much to him, but as long as Rome rules he can stand guard as long as he pleases. And Amy will be safe behind him for a few centuries more.

He's never been good at history. In 312 AD Constantine invades Rome to liberate the city. Rory isn't sure what exactly needed liberation, but it seems to make a bunch of people happy. The temple is all but ignored in the following months; the city in celebration and uproar in equal measure. Rory starts to plan how he's going to get himself and the box to somewhere not in the middle of an approaching power struggle.

Constantine saves him the trouble. He arrives on day with no pomp and certainly no warning; waltzing in like he owns the place (which he does _in theory_) and demanding to speak with the guard. Rory yessirs a lot and bows some more and when the new Roman emperor leaves he turns to Amy and says 'I just met _Constantine_', to which Amy doesn't reply.

They move them the next week. It's another cart out of Rome, but this time there is no fanfare because it's the middle of the night. Constantine wants a bargaining chip or insurance or something of the like and he's going to get the mysterious no-idea-what-it-is-probably-a-weapon as far from his enemies as possible. He has an outpost in Gaul, north of what will be the Italian border, and a waiting hole in the ground three times the size of the Pandorica. Rory balks at the thought of what that means, but with dozens of eyes waiting on his every move, he climbs in after his fiancé and lets them bury him alive. Well, not really alive, as that would involve breathing in the first place.

It's dark and a bit cold and very _very_ quiet.

Seven hundred years pass. Rory doesn't tell Amy a single story.

* * *

He is astonishingly not at all surprised to be dug up by Knights Templar. Though he doesn't know much about history he remembers learning about the holy knights in school and it was once of the few things that interested him. So he did a lot of reading. He is only surprised that so much time has passed. It seemed to go a lot faster than he would have thought, being buried in the ground with a big giant box with a dead girlfriend. The Knights bow and pray and seem to treat him like some sort of god. Or Jesus. He doesn't understand most of it; the Latin of this millennium is already too different. Either way, it means they don't argue that he walks behind the Pandorica once they load it onto a cart. It feels good to walk after so long having to sit.

The Pandorica becomes the first item of the Templar Treasure. Six months later Rory sails into Israel on a pitch-black night and the box is spirited away to a corner of the Middle East where it will not be found. The Last Centurion officially becomes the guard of the greatest treasure on Earth. Rory doesn't waste his breath trying to tell them in an outdated tongue that he already knew all that before.

* * *

It doesn't last long. A few decades later the Templars suffer the first of many defeats and a few more centuries after that the treasure starts to dwindle. A bit stolen there, a bit given away there, a bit moved there. Pretty soon the Knights are going to have to do something. It's 1231 when they do.

On another night almost as dark as the one when he first arrived on these distant shores, further than Rory Williams had ever gone when he was living, they come to take the box. At first he doesn't know what's happening. He excepted they'd cart of the rest of the treasure to some where a lot more secure than the heart of their dying lands, but they only take the Pandorica. So Rory follows. Day after day across a desert land to the wide sea and a long voyage by ship. But it's the Mediterranean, Rory is positive, and when he spots land on the distant northern horizon one day he is not at all surprised when they sail into Ostia some time later. There are no Knights on board the ship; only a crew of Westerners who speak tongues he does not understand. But he doesn't need to. Even 774 years before he first saw it doesn't change it that much. The Vatican was still a landmark.

He's only a little disappointed to learn that the Pope is not in Rome. He's out...preaching or something, Rory isn't sure what. The captain of the ships seems a little annoyed about it too. No doubt he was instructed by his masters to deliver it to His Holiness.

Instead, they find an empty room many times larger than it needs to be under the foundations of the Vatican to store the box. The officials stare at him in awe and the guards look on warily. No doubt the sailors have told his story, or what they know of it. He is the man who never dies; who has guarded the box through long centuries. They talk and gesture as the Pandorica is moved into place and Rory just stands there looking defiant. He has come this far and not even the holy fathers of the bloody Catholic Church are going to stop him going further.

They leave him in peace, for nearly a millennium. The heavy wood and iron door that bars the room never opens once in seven hundred and ten years. But he gets a visitor anyways.

* * *

It will never be recorded. No one, Rory hopes, will ever know about it. They locked the door and threw away the key (well, probably not, but after centuries of forgetting who knows where it's gone?). But even a locked door can't keep some people out.

He looks more than half dead when the brilliant flash of the vortex manipulator drops him to the floor ten feet in front of Rory. He staggers sideways and nearly falls, but Rory rushes forward to take his arm and guide him down to sit on the base of what was once his prison.

The Doctor leans his head back against the metal and closes his eyes. 'Amy', he breathes. Rory sits silently beside him, the only sound echoing in the room the Doctor's laboured breath.

'Rory,' his eyes fly open. His voice is barely more than a whisper and Rory has to lean forward to hear. 'Forgot to tell you, Rory. National Museum. 1996.'

'What? Doctor what does that mean?' the man who waited, asked. Cryptic was the Doctor's forte, but Rory needed something to go on.

'Pandorica. National Museum. 1990...'96. Be there,' he breathes the last words so low Rory isn't even sure that's what he said. His hand slips from where it grasps the tattered Roman cloak to his wrist and in a flash of light he is gone again.

'1996?' he asks to no one in particular and one person in general. 'Great, what year is it now?'

He has no idea. Rory starts telling stories again. Amy listens silently.

* * *

Rory came across Torchwood more than once in his research about the Doctor. Any man who could break the heart of the love of his life twice deserved looking into. But Torchwood was shrouded in mystery all the way back to its formation in the 1879. Something about alien hunters or space police or something of the sort. Rory gave up looking after the first few searches turned up blanks. It was the Doctor he was after, not some government organisation to stop the aliens.

So Rory has pretty much no idea that Torchwood has eyes everywhere. They aren't stupid either. The Vatican vaults; hundreds of years of collecting from across the world by the Catholic Church is too exciting a prospect to pass over. They bide their time, however. It's 1935 before they get someone on the inside. He's only a lowly researcher for the Church, but he has access to pretty much everything. And even if the vault where a magical box is stored isn't something he has a key for, he does have access to the acquisition records on the 13th century that speak of it.

It's enough to pique the interest of Torchwood head office back in London. It takes another year before they give up on conventional means of procurement and turn to their usual back up plan.

It's September 23rd of 1936 when Rory comes face to face with Captain Jack Harkness, by way of an exploding door. He will never get the chance to learn what a common method of entrance this is for the Captain. And if he's at all surprised to find someone in the room who is alive (because Rory is most certainly _alive_: he breathes now and everything) he doesn't show it. Just takes a sweeping glance around the room, lights on the Pandorica for a second, passes over Rory and then motions the crew behind him through.

'Um...' Rory starts. He never finishes. 'Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood. We're commandeering your box. I'd say you're free to come along, but it's rather more like an order than a suggestion. All right with that?'

Rory nods.

'Good. Load her up boys.' By which he means make it disappear. The men create a light field of sorts around the box with machines that make a high pitched squeal that grate Rory in all the wrong ways and he suddenly remembers what the Doctor said about radio waves.

'Wait—' he starts again, just as the sound reaches a decibel that makes his ears want to bleed, if he could actually bleed. Captain Harkness just grins at him and pushes him into the light. When his eye sight clears a few minutes later Rory finds himself standing in front of the Pandorica in a warehouse full of _stuff_. He can't identify anything in his eye line, but most of it looks technologically related to something not of this world. Which makes him wonder, because he may not understand a lot of things, but he did get the part when the Doctor said that the universe no longer existed, which means, aliens shouldn't either. And yet, here's their stuff.

He does a lot of exploring after that.

* * *

He only knows what year it is when he hears the sirens start. They are faint noises almost out of hearing range to anyone except him, but he can hear them loud and clear. Rory has no idea how many stories underground he is, but he suddenly hopes it's a lot. The bombs start falling soon after.

He endures it for what seems like ever. Never before in his long existence has time passed as slowly as this. He has never truly worried that he will get Amy out of this, but with each new explosion above his head he grows more concerned that _National Museum 1996 _will never happen.

One night the explosions get particularly close and Rory stands stoically in front of his fiancée, as if he can protect her from the Nazis. The bombs get closer; each one sounding like it's falling on his head. Until one actually does.

The far corner of the warehouse explodes in a fireball of flying debris and fire and smoke. Rory ducks despite himself, although he is too far away to be caught in the initial explosion. But there's enough wood and fuel and who knows what else in here to cause a real problem.

He specifically remembers the Doctor mentioned to stay away from fire. Or was it heat? Either way, Rory is pretty sure this is bad. But he swore an _oath_ and you didn't just throw things like that away because of a little danger. He knows beyond a doubt that the Pandorica will not burn. It's made of metal that doesn't exist on Earth and a measly little fire will barely warm the outside to the touch. But he can't leave _her_ here. Heaven knows what will happen to it if he does and with the fire starting to burn out of control, he can hardly stay himself. And he _will not leave her_.

So he does the slightly less than sensible thing and grabs a coil of rope sitting atop piles of other completely unimportant stuff in the corner furthest away from the burning inferno and runs a ring around the box, tying the rope tight at the front with a knot Amy once showed him seventy years from now and nineteen hundred years ago. He has to admit that being not really human has come in handy over the centuries, because pulling a great big box of metal not from Earth cradling his not-quite-dead fiancé inside isn't as impossible as it would seem. He stops only once to shove the warehouse doors open and is surprised to find the outside. He figured they'd buried the two of them a lot further underground for safe keeping. The rush of new oxygen feeds the fire; it's burning out of control behind him and Rory can feel the heat. He remembers now that it's the heat he needs to fear. He pushes forward, pulling foot by foot until he's cleared the doors to fresh night air beyond.

The bombs are still falling, but the planes are moving further away. He's safe, for now. And he has no idea what to do.

When the all clear sounds an hour later and Torchwood staff begin rushing out to salvage what they can, which isn't much as the warehouse roof collapsed about twenty minutes before, they do not find Rory. He doesn't know what he's doing, but this was a little too close for comfort. He had only fifty-five years before he needs to get Amy to the National Museum, and that will be impossible if he's locked up inside a vault with her again. And so he's said his farewells, made his peace with his oath, and walked away to hide. He watches as soldiers arrive and Amy is carted off to some new safe house where – hopefully – no more bombs will reach her.

He follows silently behind.

* * *

Rory misses Amy sometimes. Or rather, he misses the box in which she is inside, dead to the world. For nearly 2000 years it guarded his back as he guarded it and the lack of it seems a tangible thing. Rory gets a job as a lowly Torchwood security officer. It doesn't allow him access to the new vaults they built after the war, but it does allow him to keep an ear on things.

A few decades pass. In 1993, just when Rory is seriously starting to consider some truly elaborate and remarkably stupid escape plans to get to the National Museum on time, Torchwood changes hands. The new head is a lot less stupid than the previous ones and actually bothers to take a tour of the entire headquarters in Canary Wharf. Rory, by now his father's son and an aging man of forty with the grey hair and the security rank to prove it, escorts him.

Donald Kessinger is a strange man. He seems more loveably grandfather than head of a secret alien hunting program, but even so Rory takes to him right off the bat. And Don, as he insists on being called, takes a liking to Rory. They chat amiably as they walk the vast vaults and long corridors buried under the tower. Every now and then they come across something or other that is so old it's gathering dust and Don turns to his aid behind him and says 'donate it' or sometimes 'toss it'.

'No point keeping the useless stuff. If it's been here that long and we haven't figured it out, it's just taking up space. Time for some good honest housekeeping!'

Rory smiles and pretends to care. When they reach the vault that houses the Pandorica, Rory's amazingly beating heart is racing. He's only been down here once since the war, the day he got a security clearance high enough to gain access.

'Ah', Don says, 'the really old stuff. Now, what do we have here?' His eyes light immediately upon the box because it's the largest thing in the room. 'Kenneth? What is that?'

The aid shuffles a bunch of papers around. 'Uh, the Pandorica, sir.'

'And what does it do?'

'Um...nothing, sir. At least, no one's figured it out.'

'Right, donate it.'

Rory clears his throat. Jackpot. 'Might I suggest, sir, the National Museum? I have a friend who works there and he's been telling me about an exhibition they're planning. I think this old box here would fit.'

'Yes, National Museum, a good cause. Kenneth, see to it,' Don orders, but his interest has already moved on.

'Yes, sir,' Kenneth scribbles instructions down on his note pad while trailing after his boss.

Rory smiles.

* * *

Getting a job as a museum security guard isn't hard at all. It's leaving Torchwood that's really hard, but he knows no national secrets, per se, and Retcon doesn't work on him, so it only takes a bit of fast talk and a lie about a sick mother before he's no longer employed by alien central.

The night security job is a bit of a lark. He spends the dark hours wandering silent hallways, peering at objects and when he takes his breaks he sits with Amy in the semi-darkness and promises her over and over again that it will be soon.

As he comes on duty one night in the autumn of 1996, he hears over the PA system one of the staff calling for an Amelia and saying her aunt is looking for her. Rory smiles to himself, herds the rest of the visitors out, waves the staff off and heads for the security office and the camera monitors.

Not long now; after two thousand years, he can wait a few more minutes.


End file.
